Thursday, March 24, 2022

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

In Her Shoes (2005)

Maggie: The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem... f... filled... with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you... the joking voice, a gesture I love... I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like... Write it!... like disaster.

That's a poem by the poet Elizabeth Bishop, but since the entire thing gets recited by Cameron Diaz in In Her Shoes I can quote it -- them's the rules. Granted I make the rules and I can do whatever the hell I want. but I digress. The director Curtis Hanson was born on this day in 1945 (unfortunately he passed away in 2016) and many people will presumably memorialize him with his masterpieces L.A. Confidential or Wonder Boys (love love love Wonder Boys) or his trashterpieces The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or The River Wild... 

... (and we really should talk more about David Strathairn's short shorts in The River Wild)... but me, I gotta go this year with this lovely and immensely underrated "Pink Box Movie" here that stars Diaz and Toni Collette as lightly estranged sisters getting to know the grandmother (Shirley Maclaine) they never knew they had. This movie is so much more than it appears to be on its daffy glossy mid-Aughts surface -- it's generous and sweet and really complicated in the way it digs into its knotty relationships. Cannot recommend enough if you've never given it a chance before -- think you'll be very pleasantly surprised.


2 comments:

Shawny said...

I had no clue that CH directed The River Wild. I loved that tacky movie. Aside from that, LA Confidential is really the greatest to me because it has Russell Crowe in his prime. Oh man, him in that movie, the absolute hottest actor of that time looking his best. It doesn't get much better than that people.

mrripley said...

Collette once again overlooked in a REALLY weak year,Will Cameron ever return to film screens.